Thread: .223 case hack

A wet day here so in the garage cleaning up the couple hundred LC cases gather at the range on Thursday night.

LC is good brass but being mil brass it has a small crimp. Most folks leave it behind.

The primers pop out easily with your sizing dies but the crimp makes priming difficult.

An easy solution is to give the pockets a couple of turns with your VLD chamfer tool. If you want to be pedantic you can use a pocket cleaning tool after this but not really needed.

Works well on Federal crimped cases also.
Case on the left before, case on the right is done.


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Watch for the "wronguns" the last lot of milserp I did,there were five Berdan primed ones hiding among it lol. Good reason to check head stamps. I too use the deburring tool on primer pockets,so much easier after it's done.

The K&M 3in1 is by far the best I have ever used for primer pocket uniforming. Any mil crimp gets demolished with the Dillon swager.

I have a 45 degree countersink that does the job

I've found a Stanley knife does the job.

Gave up on about 100 LC cases a few months ago. About every second couldn't even knock out the old primer.

G clamp a drill to the bench (horizontal) with a 45 counter sunk in, you can crank through a ton in 30mins.

The .308 LC cases seem to be a lot easier to decap than the .223 ones, I guess it's the LR vs SR primer? Good brass though if it's not out of a machine gun - those tend to stretch the cases a heap and it's not really worth it for the resizing I feel.

The last lot of .308 (or I guess more correctly 7.62) cases were a bear to full length resize on the first go, a real heave in both directions.

If I could get berdan primers for the ADI F4 cases I'd fluff with those - but you need to set them up in a lathe and cut the primer out and remove the crimp on the first go as the crimp and sealer combo is very very 'functional'. It leaves the ring of the original primer to flick out after that step but the real issue is no berdan primers now!

I find the primers in LC .223 brass come out very easily using a Lee collet sizer.